Sky multiroom

[atolhurst]

We have sky and I would like multiroom but am agrieved to have to pay extra for it.

Is it possible to set it up yourself at all (running cables from your dish yourself, for example) or do the people at Sky actually have to be involved, changing settings on your account and other hocus pocus like that?

[Skids]

You can run an extra cable to an other TV from the Sky box but both TVs would be watching the same channel. To have independent Sky, you need two Sky boxes. If you obtain a second Sky box on the sly and run a cable from the dish to the box, don't plug it in to the phone line.

[atolhurst]

We have a second box as we upgraded to sky plus and have the old box. Would we need to do anything with the card in it?

[vehelpfulguy]

With multiroom you can watch two different sky channels, one on each of the boxes.

To be able to do this they have to fit a new component (a new LNB I think) to the Sky dish.

If you have not got it already you should consider Sky+ as this allows you to record programs to the hard disk in the Sky+ box.

This is very easy to do and has proved very popular in our house.

In fact Sky are (or were?) offering a deal for you to go Sky+ in place of your existing box, and move your existing box to another room for multiroom.

All we had to pay was �89 for the Sky+ box and �10 for multiroom. Fitting was free. This was only a few months ago.

[atolhurst]

We have Sky+ which we now wouldn't be without now. It's not so much watching two things seperately (although that would be a very handy extra), more about being able to watch sky in the bedroom, even though the sky box is attached to the tv in the lounge. We have one of those receivers that wirelessly transfers the signal from the tv in the front room to the tv in the bedroom but because we also have a wireless internet network in our house, the signal gets interupted and the picture/sound quality is pants.

So, as I see it, getting multiroom would elivate that, and we could then utilise the old normal sky box we had before we went to sky+. My the bug bear is having to pay additional monthly charges for it if we could get away without doing so (though I appreciate any tampering with their kit will probably invalidate the warrenty).

Hence my question which Skids (I think) answered - you can run another cable from the dish to the other sky box. Other than the physical difficulites incurred trying to run a cable through the loft, what do you actually have to do - vehelpfulguy, you mentioned an LNB cable - to make it happen?

[Dsg]

It is easy to run a cable from the dish to the spare sky box provided that you have a spare connection on your LNB (the thing that looks like a microphone and points to the centre of your dish from the extending arm).

However to get more than the free-to-air channels on the second box you will need a valid sky card - the �10 multiroom sub provides this and gives the second box access to all the channels that your main box has.

[Dsg]

If all you want to do is watch the same channel in your bedroom that you are watching in your lounge - then you do not need the second box or to waoory about the dish - all you need to do is run a co-ax aerial cable from the back of your sky+ box to your bedroom tv and tune that tv to that signal.

You can also get a little gismo that will enable you to change the sky+ channel from your bedroom - they cost about �5 from the ww.thedigiboxshop.com.

[Zen]

I watch my Sky in the other room via a Video sender,no lengths of co-ax cable needed,very convenient and I can take the receiving half ad plug it into a TV in any room or even in the garden.